These striking images have long been confined to history but, for our parents or grandparents, they were part of everyday life between 1939 and 1945.

We’ve just passed the 75th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and, looking back, Britain in so many ways was very different back then.

It’s hard to imagine how folk living in the cosseted, materialistic 21st Century would deal with the privations of life during the war years.

In the age of the internet, 24-hour TV, all-encompassing domestic mod cons, mobile phones, computer games and supermarket shelves busting with foodstuffs and goods from around the globe, how many of us could handle a day of “digging for victory” then go home to spam fritters for dinner?

Let alone, being a brave serviceman or woman squaring up to the stomping jackboots of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

The propaganda posters produced by the Ministry of Information would have been all too familiar to North East folk who lived during the war.

The images here represent just some of the hundreds produced which were aimed at boosting the general public’s morale, or providing basic day-to-day information at a time when newspapers and the radio were the only real sources of news.

One of the most famous of the motivational posters was produced in 1939 and encouraged people to ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ in the face of imminent bombing raids by the Luftwaffe.

In recent years, this famous message has been imitated and parodied on posters, mugs and merchandise declaring, for example ‘Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake or ‘Now Panic And Freak Out’.

Seventy-five years ago though, posters like these played a vital propaganda role on the home front.

We salute the bravery and fortitude of those who lived though those dark days.